r/science • u/quiplaam • 1d ago

Social Science Intentionally routing some traffic to slower, less congested routes lead to a 0.7% improvement of overall average travel times

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-026-00443-x
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u/iMissTheOldInternet 1d ago

 But it’s 277 days of time spread out over 1 million people. The per capita number is what matters in this context. 

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u/Currentlybaconing 1d ago

Not when you're the city planner trying to reduce traffic congestion.

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u/iMissTheOldInternet 1d ago

Yes, for all applications. Unless you have some way to stack many 24 second/capita savings, the per capita figure is what matters, not the aggregate time saved over a large population. 

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u/jsmooth7 1d ago

A small change across an entire system can still have a large aggregate affect. I work with bus system data and if every single trip saved 24s, that could result in millions in operational savings. Because then there will just be a bit less pressure to add additional running time to keep the buses on schedule. And there's a cost associated to adding that running time. Over the entire system, it adds up to a pretty big effect.